FAA final report cites inexperience, weather

A Hope College student’s decision to take off in bad weather and his lack of experience were the primary causes of a Jan. 17, 2010, plane crash that killed him and his passenger, a new report from the National Transportation and Safety Board says.

A Hope College student’s decision to take off in bad weather and his lack of experience were the primary causes of a Jan. 17, 2010, plane crash that killed him and his passenger, a new report from the National Transportation and Safety Board says.

David Otai, 23, rented the Cessna 172N to give rides to his friends that day, according to the report. His first passenger, Emma Biagioni, 20, arrived at Tulip City Airport around 8 a.m., but Otai delayed the flight until 9:45 a.m. because of fog and other poor weather conditions.

Otai was not current in his training on using instruments alone to fly. He had done so for less than two hours and not since April 2008, the report says.

“The pilot’s decision to take off in known instrument meteorological conditions without instrument currency or recent instrument experience, which led to spatial disorientation resulting in an inadvertent spin. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of adequate rest prior to the flight,” the report concluded earlier this month.

Otai had logged a total of 321.5 flight hours, 1.8 of those using only instruments to see in poor visibility.

Otai, a 23-year-old foreign exchange student from Nairobi, Kenya, was a sophomore at Hope. Biagioni was a 20-year-old junior and political science major there.

Hope College conducted a memorial service for the pair last year, and campus ministry is planning a “service of remembrance” for next week, though the details aren’t solidified.

Ground crew at Tulip City Airport had been concerned when the pair were preparing to take off in freezing fog and extremely overcast conditions.

“With concern, I called the chief pilot about the irresponsible takeoff and calls came in from Muskegon approach and other authorities in the area,” an employee in the Tulip City Air Service front office, Aaron Haltenhoff, said in his statement to the NTSB. “Mr. Otai as a qualified pilot seemed to follow a safety protocol by checking the weather and canceling the first scheduled flight. I don’t know why he just decided to go without an (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan into IFR conditions.”

“I said that it was pretty bad and that I had heard no one else in the air all morning,” another airport employee described his conversation with Otai that morning shortly before he took off.

“The plane disappeared in the dense overcast,” the employee said in his statement to the NTSB. The employee is not named in the report.